and I didn't know what a hostel was.
I wasn't comfortable with the idea
of what I thought it might be.
But I entered in, I walked through the doors
at like nine, 9.30 in the morning.
And this is an extremely pivotal moment in my life.
James, you were in the back in the kitchen making pancakes
and you were like had your little apron on,
you were covered in batter.
And I was in tears, really lost both physically, mentally,
emotionally, so lost.
And you saw it right on my face.
You dropped everything.
You gave me a huge bear hug.
You didn't even say anything at first.
Literally just two strangers hugging
in the cute little Victorian house in Little Italy
in San Diego.
And I was like, it was that moment
where I knew that I was where I needed to be.
And I felt something that I'd never
felt before in my entire life.
So that was my very first introduction to a hostel.
Hello, friends and travelers.
Thanks for listening.
You are riding along on the Hostel Road Trip podcast.
Our mission is to spread awareness
of the true hostel experience in the Americas
and share stories from the fascinating hosts who
create those unique facilities.
I'm your host, Jimmy Black, joined alongside co-founder
of International Travelers House, Bobby Dyer.
Each session, we sit down with hostel operators or travel
influencers to hear about their road success,
discuss trending hostel topics, and close
with tips for travelers who are seeking
to have the ultimate experience when
visiting each destination.
You can't afford to miss this trip.
Now fasten your seat belts and let's hit the road.
Welcome back to the Hostel Road Trip podcast.
We've got an exciting day, a double header today.
Right now, we're meeting with Dave Cook out in New Hampshire
at the Barn Door Hostel.
I'm Jimmy Black with IGH Hostel.
It's currently up at our Big Bear Mountain location
and joined again by my partner and co-founder, Robert Dyer,
who's down at our hostel.
And I'm going to be talking to him about the hostel
and Robert Dyer, who's down at our Salilita, Mexico location.
Thank you both for joining us.
Yeah, great to be here.
Welcome, Dave.
Yeah, same.
Exciting.
Yeah.
And we're also going to be meeting with Frankie Medusa
later this afternoon for the second part of our double
header.
So stay tuned for these episodes to drop,
as we've been getting about quite quickly
after we do our recordings and live and one shot,
one kill format.
So yeah, let's dive into it with Dave Cook,
who we obviously have a special relationship with
and a fondness and an intimacy, as Dave was at one time
part of the IGH team.
But he's gone on to open a rocking place out in New
Hampshire called the Barn Door Hostel
and has been running that for how many years now, Dave?
Entering in our fifth year.
Entering in our outstanding.
And the first couple are the toughest, as you know, Dave.
So you're past that hump.
And we're excited to hear your journey,
how you got into hostels, how you
have gone through this process of opening up
your own hostel and your style and what you have to offer
and what you see in the future for Barn Door Hostel.
But first, I always like to ask, what was your first exposure
to hostels?
It was you guys.
The first one ever, you had never stayed in another one?
Literally never even heard of one.
Wow, OK.
Well, then we're going to get to a great story right off the bat.
So give us a little background, because you
do have a fantastic hostel story.
And the fact that the first one is even better.
Yeah, you chimed me into the fact
that this was 12 years ago, which is crazy to think about.
But yeah, I was living.
I was born and raised in Connecticut
and moved out west, as young folks do,
to go find themselves or get lost or both.
And I was waiting to hear back from a couple of job interviews
and had really run out of money and was down on my luck.
And I called my mom.
I was like, hey, mom, I give up on this silly California dream.
I'm ready to come back.
And she quickly Googled cheap places to stay
and found this little tiny Victorian house
called International Traveler's House.
And I think she booked me like two nights.
And I was almost adamantly refusing the fact
that I didn't want to go at all.
I was too sheltered, too naive, too stuck in my own ego
type of thing.
I didn't know what a hostel was.
I wasn't comfortable with the idea of what
I thought it might be.
But I entered in.
I walked through the doors at like 9, 9.30 in the morning.
And this is an extremely pivotal moment in my life.
James, you were in the back in the kitchen making pancakes.
And you had your little apron on.
You were covered in batter.
And I was in tears, really lost both physically, mentally,
emotionally, so lost.
And you saw it right out of my face.
You dropped everything.
You gave me a huge bear hug.
You didn't even say anything at first.
Literally just two strangers hugging
in the cute little Victorian house in Little Italy
in San Diego.
And I was like, it was that moment
where I knew that I was where I needed to be.
And I felt something that I'd never
felt before in my entire life.
That was my very first introduction to a hostel.
And after those couple days that my mom booked,
I saw a sign in the bathroom, I think it was.
It's like, ask us how to get a night for free.
Bobby, you were maybe on vacation.
I hadn't met you until like a week later.
But after those first couple days, James, you told me,
I just needed to clean the grill.
It had just been barbecue night.
And I needed to clean the grill.
And therefore, I could get a free night stay.
Fast for trade.
And little did I know that barbecue night was
something very, very important in the early growth of ITH.
And I had a full day of cleaning that area, the grill,
the beer cans, everything.
It was kind of a nice wake up call.
Like, oh, I've cleaned the grill before.
No, this was like I had to clean.
It's like cleaning a slaughterhouse afterwards.
But I do remember that, David.
You just looked like a guy like, this guy
doesn't need a pancake.
He needs a hug.
Absolutely, I did.
And to this day, I tell this story time and time again.
We've actually done a presentation here
at the hostel of how did Barn Door come to fruition.
And yeah, we do a bunch of different community talks.
They're called Chalk Talks.
And I did one.
And yeah, that was this pancake story is the story
that I start that with.
It's such a branded moment in my heart and in my life that, yeah,
that was my first introduction.
That's a beautiful story.
I don't know if you can beat that one.
But so many great memories flooding back in,
now talking to you in those early times.
And also showing how beautiful and powerful and impactful
the hostel experience can be when it's being executed properly
with the right style of craft.
So yeah, so happy that that experience put you
on that trajectory.
And that has brought you to where you are now.
So in that journey, let's kind of start to switch over
to the Barn Door Hostel.
How did that conception start?
And what were the first moves in your experience there
that it opened up five years ago?
So give us a rundown of how you got that kicked off.
Sure, in most people's lives, you take this path,
whether it be circuitous or very straightforward.
And I took a very circuitous one and kind of happenstanced my way
up to Romney, New Hampshire, where Barn Door is.
After leaving ITH, I worked at an adult summer camp.
I worked at a YMCA as an environmental educator,
as an age group director.
I worked at a rock climbing gym as a youth program director.
So I kind of took all of those things
and utilized them towards the hostel.
But the reason I was even up in this area to begin with
was because of the climbing gym that I was working at in Rhode
Island, where I went and served a couple tables for you
guys at the Mudville Flats.
That's another bizarre chapter.
I know.
It's such a beautifully intertwined life story.
Yeah, so I was in Rhode Island working at a climbing gym.
And people were telling me about this place called
Romney, which is a very small town.
It's like 1,400 people.
And the main demographic is over 50, 55.
But we're at the heart of White Mountain National Forest.
And there is an absolute mecca for rock climbing.
So as working in the rock climbing gym,
I went up to Romney to go rock climb on real rock,
and was camping and staying in hotels and bed and breakfasts.
And I was like, man, this place needs a hostel.
We need something that's comfortable for outdoor
adventurer people and affordable enough
that it's not $150 a night at the mom and pops B&B.
So I started looking around.
And I looked at a couple of different properties,
realized very quickly that I was way outside
of my financial ballpark.
So I had to convince.
Well, at first, I tried to convince my, at the time,
climbing partner's parents.
I tried to convince them to come in on the business.
And then they didn't really want to do it.
So I convinced my folks to.
And thankfully, we were able to secure a property.
It's nine acres.
It's beautifully situated.
We're two miles away from the climbing area.
And we do have camping.
We have about six or seven acres of camping.
We have our hostel, which sleeps 26.
And we have a converted bus that's
a little glamping thing and soon to build
a couple more cabins.
Amazing.
I love your, I have a similar story
of working at the hostel, leaving the hostel
for something else, and then coming back to the hostel.
And I'd interested, when you started
working at the other places after you left ITH,
at what point were you like, damn, I missed that hostel life?
And then I always had that bug and then
wanted to get back into it.
What drew you back in after leaving?
I'll be honest with you.
I missed it almost every single day.
I had it so good in San Diego.
You guys were such amazing inspirations
and amazing bosses.
And so after leaving there, it was
kind of a little bit of a rough break
in the beginning between us.
And very shortly afterwards, I realized
that I'm a complete idiot and I need to grow up.
And we, as friends and as business partners and whatever,
kind of realized, OK, it's nice for folks
to spread their wings and go experience other things
and go work at other jobs.
But truly, in my heart, it never really left.
Like, ITH was such a defining moment
and such a defining feature of my personality,
the hostel lifestyle, meeting people, socializing,
lending a helping hand, building a community,
being part of a bigger community.
All of that stuff is super important to me.
And it really never left me.
And I tried to instill those things in my other roles
at other companies and doesn't quite line up
the same way it does as if you were owning and operating
or working at a hostel.
Yeah, we always noticed that in you being a,
you have that ultimate host personality.
You're a fun guy to be around.
And you keep life light and exciting
and have a can-do attitude, which
is what it takes to be a great hostel manager or owner.
But it is interesting.
We were chatting with Ryan for the Monterey Hostel.
And he said it nicely, like, the hostel is my life.
The life is my hostel.
And we find those are the best hostels.
You get to let your personality really shine through.
And people want to come experience
your level of hospitality or your personal style
of hospitality, which is different for everybody.
And that's what makes hostels so unique,
because you're really getting hosted at this place.
And I think that's why you've had so much success over there,
as you are a great host.
So we'll send the love.
Thank you.
You definitely keep us on our toes and inspired as well.
How about to the, you get open.
Tell us about kind of like opening day,
maybe the first 100 days or what.
It's a unique for everybody.
We love to hear that.
And what was that like for you?
Yeah, opening day is just a great talking point for us.
So we moved on to the property in May of 2018
and almost immediately started renovating this barn.
I think in our last Hostel Road Trip podcast was during COVID.
We kind of talked about converting.
It was a chicken coop at one point.
And we converted it into this hostel.
And it's totally transforming every day.
The room that I'm sitting in is new as of like 11 months ago.
So everything is always changing.
But opening day, it took about a year to gut this place.
It was gross.
And it was so bad.
Mice and just, it was just gross.
So we gutted it down, studs and cement, and that was it.
We built it all back up and opened,
had our like soft opening party, which turned into a grand
opening party, Memorial Weekend 2019.
And it was wild.
We were 100% sold out.
We had like, I don't know, 150 campers.
We had every bed full in here, 26 people.
We had a band play.
We had a food truck.
We had a bar, cart.
We had just people having a great time.
And I was having a great time.
Guys bringing moonshine over.
All of this like really rural New Hampshire community stuff.
And we had, so we had the police come once,
technically twice, but the first time they came and kind of
drove up a little bit fast.
Hey, you get in the car.
And I was like, me?
So they put me in the car, thankfully in the front seat.
And we drove around and he pulled over to different areas
of town and he was like, oh, I'm going to go to the
different areas of town and turned off his car,
rolled down the windows and turned off the car and was like,
hey, what are you here right now?
And obviously we heard the party happening.
And it's such a small town that it was a new experience for
everybody, myself, the police officer, everybody in the town.
They didn't know what a hostel was.
They didn't know what kind of this party scene was.
The younger generation, like I said, the main demographic is
up there.
So he brought me back eventually.
And a couple of hours later, we had this guy who was riding
his bike down.
We have two camping fields.
One is like up on a hill behind the hostel and one is down low
in front of the hostel.
And so he was riding his bike down this gravel hill from one
to the other and went over his handlebars.
It was bad.
I will save you the details.
His body was laying face down and his head was face up.
Thankfully, I mean, you joked when we first jumped on this
call about my stash looking like a lifeguard.
Thankfully, I was a lifeguard for many, many years.
And so my instincts kicked in.
We had somebody calling 911.
We had somebody checking his pulse, all of this stuff.
And this is while a band is playing on our opening.
We had not even had anybody sleep overnight yet.
And this day one, like 6 p.m.
So the ambulance finally gets here.
You saw this guy or was a cop there when the guy went over
the handlebars?
No, this was like hours later.
Yeah, this was like 6 or 7 p.m.
Yeah, and the cop came at like 3 30.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
The neighbors.
Yeah.
Yep.
So this guy flips over the handlebars, ends up with a broken neck.
They are, I mean, my lifeguard training is not EMT and ambulance
training, but I'm witnessing some things that are like,
you probably shouldn't do that.
You know, asking the guest, yes or no questions.
Like the first thing you do if somebody has something broken
in their neck, you don't ask them yes or no questions.
They're just going to nod their head.
Yes.
So it was just wild.
Say again.
You never want to be the drunkest guy at the party.
Because you got exactly.
Exactly.
So I find out weeks later that he's totally fine.
He just had a little neck brace on for a little while
and then was like riding his ATV around.
So a friend of a friend sent me a video of him riding his ATV around.
So he's totally fine.
But the moment of panic, a day.
We literally just to add the icing on the cake.
Like, I don't know how you guys feel about insurances and insurance companies.
Very, very difficult to describe a hostile to an insurance company.
So we've tried a ton.
And thankfully, we signed our insurance papers that morning,
the morning of the party.
Oh, my God.
And then this happens.
You know, the cops come, the ambulance comes.
So it was just totally insane.
It's been knock on wood, smooth sailing.
You just got to get it out of the way.
Yeah, you ripped the bandaid right off.
That's just wild right there.
And I think on the first day and so much panic and anxiety.
All right.
They're already at the tops.
And then you throw that on.
And the fact that you were detained by the cop and driven around,
that's just too much.
You could make a movie out of that opening day.
Yeah, it turns out I ended up complaining to the town
about the police officer because there's not a noise ordinance in town.
Well, there is, but it's not pertaining to parties or anything like that.
And since that day, we've been very respectful.
But I did go to the town and say, hey, listen, I was borderline detained
by this officer and whatever.
And I had to give a statement to the town and the officer had to go in
and give his statement.
And I don't know if I had a direct relation or correlation to this,
but he has since been let go.
And the officer that's in town now is amazing.
He's been here probably a dozen times on Good Faith
and just checking things out, coming for community events.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, yeah, it was a weird situation for us to navigate through a small town
with kind of a disgruntled officer and a broken neck.
Yeah, that as well.
I was actually talking and you're going to be, you'll laugh,
and you'll be getting contacted sometime shortly.
We're doing a project in the attempt to bring about hostile awareness
of writing another hostile book.
Yes.
I've given them your name.
We have a ghost writer who's lived on site now for about a year
throughout different IGHs.
He's our version of Hunter S. Thompson of the Hell's Angels.
And he's a great guy named that.
And he's going to be reaching out to you because when we were doing
the interviews with him, he was taking his note taking
and capturing people's names in the beginning that were repeated.
And yours, of course, was one of them.
But just back to your experience, the same thing with us.
It's such wild times in the beginning.
And we were moving so fast and trying to open up multiple spots
in those first second year that I always reflect on how crazy it was
and how wild it was that we lost a lot of good men, including yourself,
because it was just such a chaotic, wild,
wild, but that story you have, though, man, that's the tops for opening days.
Yeah.
Now, how about the hostile industry in New Hampshire?
I'm very curious on that as we once did a road trip through New Hampshire
doing podcasts with the hostels that were there at that time.
And this is years ago before the pandemic.
As we were posting old episodes from the archives or going to post them,
we did see that it seemed like some of the places up there may not still be open.
But I was curious, what's it look like now as far as the New Hampshire
hostile operation?
How many are active?
Sure.
It's wildly different to compare a rural state like New Hampshire
to a more densely populated state like California.
And the sheer number of hostels is crazy different.
Crazy different. New Hampshire, to the best of my knowledge, has maybe 10.
That's cool.
Yep. And of those 10, I would say maybe four are like above board.
A legit operation.
Absolutely. Yeah.
That's on par with numbers for every state, I'd say. About half of them.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we drew a lot of inspiration not only from ITH in my time there,
but inspiration from a very famous hostel in New Hampshire, the Notch Hostel.
And I think you guys have done an episode with Serena at the Notch Hostel.
Amazing stuff.
She runs such a tight ship.
She has guest requests as the number one thing on her agenda every single day.
She just wants to make sure that every single person is taken care of.
So we really thought that that was obviously a huge thing.
Like you said, any good host, you want to just make sure that that guest is taken care of.
So we pulled a lot of inspiration from her and asked her for help when we were opening, too.
Her and I helped kind of gather a couple local hostel owners in Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire.
It started out as New Hampshire Hostels Network and then moved into
the more of the New England Hostels Network.
Oh, awesome.
We probably have maybe a dozen total.
Not all of those are active in the chats and whatever, but yeah.
It's just kind of something to share.
And we're all spaced out nicely.
So we're not stealing each other's guests.
And not that that's, in my opinion, ever really a thing.
Like Bobby said in the beginning, every hostel and every host is totally different.
And every guest is totally different.
So somebody could be looking for something that Barn Door offers for one specific weekend,
even though they're a diehard, not hostile guest, for example, and vice versa.
So I don't see any sort of competition with any of them.
And I think that this group that we formed, this network that we formed,
has helped with just sharing information with great guests, with groups.
If we're booked and, oh, this other hostel might have accommodations available,
troublesome people in the area, everything.
That is awesome here.
I think that what you say is so true about,
and the not-chance is a good example of just focusing on every guest.
And one crucial thing in that is how big is your hostel?
Because at a certain point, there's a threshold where you're just not going to be able to do that
anymore, give them that host to guest catered experience, custom experience.
So I love the size of your hostel as well as the size of Notch Hostel.
And we have hostels that are in that range of 30 to 80 beds,
but it's so much more prevalent in the 30 bed hostels, how much more of that you can do.
It's just like focusing on the individual and making sure their experience is as best
as can be in helping them because that really, in addition to the social atmosphere of the hostel,
it can be a huge differentiator compared to hotels.
They're just not going to get that.
I think that the authenticity of a hostel, the personal touch dwindles drastically.
It's kind of an exponential decay.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I think today, especially you're seeing a lot of people are looking for community,
looking for connection coming out of the pandemic.
And now also with AI, it's taken over everything.
So you're seeing, again, people want to embrace the humanity and the human connection.
You guys do an amazing job with having that community vibe.
And I think it sounds like you've mended any fences with people when you first moved in,
we had so many great local events.
But how do you guys prioritize that and try to execute a great community plan
to welcome the community and host these events at the hostel?
What is your kind of mindset there that maybe other hostels could try to learn from?
My background is in community development or just community in general.
Growing up, going to and working at a YMCA kind of developed my love for both being in
the community that I'm in, but also creating little communities within that.
Whether it's somebody, for example, at the YMCA being part of the weightlifting crew,
you know, you see the same eight guys every weekend going in the weight room or the same
couple of old ladies at the pool aqua sizing.
So just those little tiny communities are an obvious and very important part of the
larger overall community.
And it's our probably number one priority is to not only host the local community that we have,
but also to engage them and pull them in for an art night or a craft fair or a family movie night,
something that just tells the locals, hey, we're here.
We're not weird.
We're not whatever you think that we are.
The story you heard about the guy that broke a neck.
That was exactly whatever.
Come on over, hang out, bring your kids.
We're showing Toy Story tonight, whatever you want, you know.
So it's really nice to be able to do that.
And then for that community of locals to blend with these outdoor adventure people that are
coming as guests here.
So we'll have on any given night, I don't know, 30 to 50 people just floating around,
whether it's inside in the hostel or outside on the campground, and just be just exist with these
locals. And the beautiful thing about the location that we have is that we're surrounded by nature.
And nature is kind of like a grounding, a common ground for everybody, right?
If you don't love fresh air, how could it be more easy to connect?
You're all out here.
Maybe you're a local.
You moved here 50 years ago. Your family's been here all your life or whatever.
Because you love it up here.
It's nature.
There's not a lot of people.
You get to see trees and beautiful blue herons flying through the river.
And the same thing, the same essence is why rock climbers come here, why hikers come here,
why whitewater kayakers come here.
They're looking to be out in nature.
And so it's really nice to have the local community and the outdoor community blend.
Sure, it might take Toy Story 3 or it might take an art fair to do that, but those folks are there
and they're interacting together.
And that to me is super special.
Absolutely.
I think that you'll give a great example of how organically one can represent the nature of the
hostel and the way they want it to be seen and control the narrative more.
Because as you know, we know, the listeners know, the hostels have a horrible stigma in the U.S.
And that's a big part of the reason why we're trying to do this book is to bring the other side
to the story or more awareness.
Because it just seems like we just get slammed with slanderous type of perceptions that are out there.
And this is a great way what you're doing to at least control your local community,
what surrounds you by bringing them awareness about what you are and who you are.
And that's going to bring in all kinds of good vibes, but also good business.
They're going to refer you to their friends now.
You're going to have a good perception within the community, within the law enforcement agencies.
So I think that's awesome what you're doing, not only having events, but letting your facilities
be used to have certain events like yoga retreats and meetups.
That can just be so powerful and profound of an impact for hostile awareness for everyone,
for the industry.
So the more that we can all do that, the more we can organically fight back against that stigma.
Totally.
Yeah, and this podcast is one of the big things we're doing while we want to share the stories.
You hear the stories from the owners of the hostel, what their hostels are about and the
mission they're on, so it can help display the truth to the community.
And just to add to those great events you're doing, I think it's hostels, the more and more
hostels can get looked at as like a friendly gathering place for the international community
or any kind of traveler in the little community.
That's a great thing.
So now there's affordable lodging in each town and a friendly welcome host.
And also from the marketing side, if you're sitting at your place and it's the low season,
instead of just sitting around frustrated that you're empty during the low season,
utilize your local community, host some local events.
Now you're doing some great work.
You're building relationships and it's amazing.
If you build five, 10 relationships, you build one relationship before you know it,
their cousin's visiting, staying at the hostel, booked for seven nights.
Precisely.
So the more popular you can become in a positive way and obviously provide the people with
a great experience and a great room at its core, but it does wonders for growth and filling
up your beds.
So yeah, absolutely.
I think that there isn't really a community center around us.
I mean, we do have a university in the next town over, but I think that that draws a ton
of the younger crowd, which is totally perfect for that.
But we want to kind of provide a community space for everybody.
And exactly what you said, Bobby, we have a local person and they have a little cabin,
an off-grid cabin, but their kids are coming to visit or the grandkids are coming to visit.
And they need another place to stay.
Now that person that lives in the town knows about us because they came to a basket weaving
retreat or just a little movie night, whatever it may be, a wine night.
They now know about us and they say, hey, son, grandson, like y'all can stay right down
the road.
They're super comfortable.
It's whatever, whatever.
And they don't have this, they don't have this, they don't have this, they don't have
this idea, this, this mystery of whatever this place may be.
And I had that too.
When I was, when I first stepped foot in your guys place, I saw the movie hostile, you know,
like that's what everybody, you know, it's a, it's a hackneyed subject, but yeah, the
movie hostile kind of is what anybody and everybody that ever has heard of the word
hostile, but doesn't know what a hostile is, thinks.
Defaults.
Yeah.
Total default.
And it's, you know, it's a great horror movie, but it's not what this is about.
It's not, not at all.
So it's a remaking it.
Did you see that?
Paul Giamatti is coming out.
I did not see that.
No, it's going to get back in the news.
Wow.
Okay.
So yeah, well, you got to get ahead of the curve.
You have to get the word out there.
And another thing, the first one on SEO on that.
Yeah.
But Dave, I have a curious question with the, and the new England hostile network has built up.
Yeah.
Would you now, are you a member of the Naha like the North American hostile association?
I'm not.
I'm aware of it.
I know of now there's another one.
What stopped you from joining as we were heartbroken not to see you at the past events?
Um, time, I guess.
So I think I told Bobby, but I don't know about you, James.
I have a four month old now.
Oh my God.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
That may be the only excuse I could accept.
So yeah, so, so time, time is, uh, very important now.
Um, it's, it's, it totally changes once you have a child.
Um, as you probably know, Bobby, it's so different and every minute you can get exactly what used
to take 10 minutes now takes an hour and a half.
What used to take an hour and a half now takes three days, you know, it's totally changed.
Um, my perception and how I operate this business, including branching out to larger communities
like Naha.
Um, I did go to, uh, that, um, American house conference that I saw you guys at, um, a few
years back that might've been 20, how about 2018?
Yeah.
Charleston.
Yes.
Yeah, I know.
They're overdue for a hostile conference.
Bring the family, bring the whole family last time.
Yeah.
We bring the kids.
Baby friendly.
Great.
We'll, we'll, we'll try to make it work.
Cause like I said, it's, it's, um, it's an interesting juggle to, I live, I live about
25 feet away from this building in another building.
Um, I can see the lights on at night.
So it's this, uh, the person that you said earlier, Bobby, the hostile is my life and
my life is a hostile that rings so true for me.
I'm here all the time.
I see everything and, and time is so different now.
So I would, I would love to, to reach out and be part, part of larger communities like
that.
Um, and it's, it's definitely on my radar, uh, and not off the table for sure.
So.
Well, you know, the, uh, spread the word in that network too.
And I'm sure that it'd be willing to give a good deal to you for joining if, uh, you
all joined together, right?
If the entire New England network became a part of because that's definitely they've
got to Jim Kennedy.
It's got a great thing going on and we've seen a few different ones pop up.
Uh, and then the gals in Denver have an amazing, uh, movement going on.
Have you joined that with the hostiling us?
I have not.
Um, you're all being very much isolated.
Over there in New England.
I don't know.
So I'm from New England, so don't make me come home.
We'd love to have you, Jimmy.
I'll hop on the Harley and I'll drive door to door and make you all join.
Perfect.
Yeah.
I think, um, so the, the main goals of the New England hostile network right now, um,
are really the, the, it all started during COVID, um, when we needed some guidance in
navigating, uh, should we be open?
Can we be open?
And so we all kind of gathered together and then, um, we all decided to join the New
Hampshire lodging and restaurant association.
Um, so I'm still a member of that.
I'm not sure if the other, uh, members of the New England hostiles network are, um,
but they're a crazy valuable resource for, for us in operating.
They'll give you literally everything that you ever needed, um, without, I mean,
not money, but, but yeah, any, any resource that you need, any sort of information, um,
when it comes to operating any place with a bed or booze.
Yeah.
So that's, that's our main focus right now.
And perhaps we can broaden that to, to a Naha or a hostile US, um, in the future.
All right.
Well, one last question, I'm going to send out an invitation, but you're, you're tough
with, you know, you're not attending any of the conferences, but I was going to
invite you to an old classic.
We still do our company manager retreat of the Josh retreat music festival.
Oh man.
We've started to take and invite other hostile owners and managers with us.
We've got Joe from bond fall and sharkies coming this October.
Cool.
Alfie is a manager up at the HI Windsor.
So I was going to say, Dave, if you come out, I'll, I'll pay for your ticket.
But that's, uh, that's tougher.
I understand.
Yeah.
I would accept an attendance at either one of the conferences in its place.
Sure.
I'll try to make one of those things happen. Um, and it's funny that you bring up
the J tree music fast because we were just talking about that in our manager meeting
two days ago and how that was another pivotal, you know, very, uh, very poignant point in my life.
Um, from world Packers out there.
Say again.
It was us and Eric from world Packers out there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yep.
Really.
You should see how much you've improved it.
We've got our bees, we've got power, we got water.
I mean, that back in the day, I tell stories about those early trips when it was just,
you know, a couple of gallons of water, a few tents and a sleeping cot.
Exactly.
Yep.
I didn't even have a car.
I was right on the, right on the sand.
Yeah.
We've come a long way to a long way and there is a kid's bill.
So remember it's day, it's daycare friendly.
Yep.
Wow.
Well, hey, thank you so much for joining us, David.
I mean, just the blast from the past and we've always been so proud of you and we always
tell everyone about you and what you've done over there.
Happy to get excited to see you continue to grow over there at the barn door.
And I look forward to one day visiting and I do when I come back home and one of these
visits, but keep on rocking out there, brother.
So nice to talk to you.
Yeah.
Thank you guys very much.
It was, it's really, really good to catch up, really good to see you guys' faces and
tell some stories that you know and don't know.
So now you know.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Thanks so much, Dave.
Have a great one.
Thanks guys.
Take care.